Purple, Prince of fruit and veg

~ Purple reigns! Red Bull Purple Brussels Sprouts growing in the veg patch ~

Did anyone notice the purple cauliflower purée on the latest series of UK Masterchef?  It was more creamy mauve than purple and judge John Torode said straightaway that he wasn't a fan of the colour; I have to agree, it did not look appealing, but I've read time and again recently that purple veg has been creeping up to the top of the superfood trend for the past year. I even had purple sweet potato patties at a vegetarian supper club recently which I thought was a novel concept but, blow me down, if I didn't find purple sweet potatoes at the supermarket at the weekend.

So what is it with these so-called superfoods? Personally, I believe that eating any organically grown and freshly harvested food helps to maintain good health but, apparently, the deeper the colour of the food, the greater the nutrients within. Scientists say that purple food contains very high levels of anthocyanins. These powerful anti-oxidants are known to combat free radicals in our bodies thereby boosting our immune systems and, in turn, reducing inflammation, keeping our hearts healthy and helping to fight the ageing process.  It's also been found that regularly eating these foods can reduce the risk of getting high blood pressure and maintain good cholesterol levels.  So far, so fabulous.

However, it has to be said that eating a bowl of purple potatoes is not going balance out any unhealthy eating (hello, cheesy biscuits) but as I already grow - and eat - a rainbow of veg, I thought I'd take a look at which purple veg I've grown in the veg patch, enjoyed, and will grow again.

1. Purple kale. Redbor* is a deep red curly kale in the purple spectrum, grown when I trialled several varieties to see which I liked best. I've also grown a Russian kale 'Red Ursa' which is pale green with beautiful purple ribs. Both were very tasty, slightly sweeter and milder than green kale. (Although my must-have kale will always be Cavolo Nero which, btw, is also a superfood.)

2. Purple carrots. I grew these a few years ago as a fun experiment and they were very tasty. Those had an orange core; this year I'm growing Purple Sun* which keeps its colour through to the core. All carrots were originally purple like this; orange carrots are a 16th century innovation.

3. As Purple Sprouting Broccoli turns green when cooked, I'm not sure that it counts, same for the purple beans I've grown (Blue Lake, Cosse Violette). I've got seeds for several varieties this year that will, in theory at least, give me a staggered crop from October to April next year.

4. Then there was my all time favourite for both looks and taste, purple brussels sprouts.  (See top photo. Gorgeous.) These were a red ball sprout, the flavour is reckoned to be superior to green sprouts. And if you don't like sprouts, try stir frying them with bacon - you might change your mind.

5. Purple Pacific* asparagus, turns green on steaming. Pops up every year and is very delicious but doesn't seem to have multiplied at all - and I think one of the crowns may now be deceased. Last year I had a total of 15 stems over the entire season! Still, mustn't complain, they were very tasty with a poached egg.

6.  Aubergine. So delicious in so many recipes; it's only the skin that's purple but it still counts. Baba Ganoush, anyone?  Last year I grew baby aubergines, this year I have seeds for a compact aubergine 'Pinstripe' which can be container grown on my balcony. The velvety leaves and purple flowers don't look amiss in the flower border either.

7.  Purple Potatoes.  In 2013 I grew a purple skinned, purple fleshed potato called Vitelotte. What I failed to realise was that when you're choosing from over 80 varieties of heritage potato, it pays to make a note of the recommended use. Vitellote was deemed excellent for chips; not realising this, I boiled mine for mash with disastrously sloppy pale mauve results. Five years on and UK seed company Dobies are offering a purple potato that claims to be "ideal for mashing, baking, roasting, microwaving, crisps and chips".  I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of purple mash on my cottage pie, or purple chips, although it would certainly be a talking point.

8.  Beetroot. Sometimes it's red, sometimes almost purple. It was a root vegetable that I couldn't stand until I grew some at the start of the veg patch years, then I learned to appreciate it and now I love it. I just wish I could find the recipe for those little chilli flavoured beets that can be bought in the supermarket! Meantime, there's always beetroot chocolate cake. (Link to my recipe.)

There are two more purple veg that I haven't grown before but I'm intrigued to try this year:

9. Purple Kohl Rabi - hadn't crossed my horticultural horizon until last summer. I now know it's a brassica, similar to a turnip or broccoli stem in flavour, but crunchy, mild and sweet. Apparently the purple is slower to grow than the green but I've ordered seeds and let's see!

10. Purple 'Shiraz'* snow peas.  I always have mangetout growing in the veg patch as I use them a lot in cooking but have never grown purple ones before. I expect they taste the same, but with added nutrients, and there's a bonus of lovely bi-coloured flowers!  Plus I can't resist eating the young pods raw.

But the one thing that I haven't grown - and won't be anytime soon - is a purple cauliflower.

So, anyone plumping for purple veg this year?  

* Note: Reading back through this post, I noticed that a lot of the veg I've mentioned (Redbor kale, Purple Sun carrots, Purple Pacific asparagus, Shiraz peas) can be sourced from one supplier - Dobies. One way to save on post and packing fees. 

Cake, Sunday, the Fringe benefits.

Chelsea Fringe, now in its second year, has been offering up a range of creative garden themed events over the past two weeks. One of the events that I've been looking forward to was the Cake Sunday organised by Naomi of Outofmyshed blog.  Her community gardening project, the focus of her excellent book Veg Street, hosts regular cake and tea events for local residents to get together and share garden chat.  Last year and this, as part of Chelsea Fringe, the street has welcomed members of the public to have a good gawp at their lovely front gardens and planted tree pits in the pavements, eat cake, drink tea, make seed bombs and have a good chat.  This year the event also boasted a grand opening by a group of Chelsea Pensioners and singalong entertainment from allotmenteer and songstress Jo Stephenson.

Running alongside the real-life Cake Sunday has been a virtual version, the Bloggers Cut, hosted by Veg Plotting blog, to bring a wider internet gardening community together over more cake!  As I took part in both, I had some hard decisions to make regarding what sort of cake I would make.  I love baking cakes but had to limit myself to just one. (Actually, I made two but the coffee sponge with cappucino marscapone filling was bagged by my teenager for a stay-at-home cake.)

Various recipes using garden grown ingredients were considered: should it be my summer fruits traybake or perhaps Jono's almond topped rhubarb cake?  I would have loved the recipe for the carrot and courgette cake which a local café serves but in the end opted for this lemon and polenta cake which I topped with edible flowers and petals held on with a lemon glaze.

Once over at the event, I dropped the cake off and quickly locked my bicycle.  I'd missed the grand opening by the Chelsea Pensioners (thanks to faffing around collecting edible flowers) but was in time to hear some hilarious songs by the singing allotmenteer, Jo Stephenson.  I'd spied this fabulously retro-frocked and wellied up creature chatting to visitors as I supped tea with some friends I'd bumped into.

Jo kept us entertained with her true life songs of stolen marrows, slugs and Alan Titchmarsh (not necessarily in the same song), standing among the potatoes and alliums of the disco ball community rock garden.  Jo and her singing partner Dan have a show called 'Can You Dig It?' on next Saturday, 8th June in Bethnal Green.

Whilst everyone was gathered round, it was the perfect opportunity to present the awards for the best planting in a tree pit, with a small trophy presented to each of the three recipients. As I understand it, judging by the Curious Gardener and Veronica from Which? Gardening was firm but fair.  Monocultures not allowed. Diversity of planting gaining extra points. Colin is a hard man to sway.

Earlier in the day, local resident Tim Bushe had demonstrated his topiary cutting;  I already knew of the elephants that he'd created and wanted to pop back for a closer look. I absolutely love them - if I had a large scruffy privet hedge, I'd want my own herd.

Another hedge had been clipped in a vertical box design with an arched entrance to the garden and reminded me of Christopher Bradley-Hole's clipped show garden for the Telegraph at Chelsea.

That just left time for a quick tour of the neighbourhood front gardens;  the project has encouraged many households to grow both edible and ornamentals and to create gardens they're proud of.  There are some lovely gardens in the street - out of many, these three caught my eye and I was able to have a quick chat to one or two of the owner gardeners.

Lovely juxtaposition of colours in this garden, especially the way the slate mulch echoes the colours of the planting.

Thriving plants in this garden get morning sun and are well tended by an enthusiastic owner. 
I was invited through to see the back garden which is even lovelier with extremely well stocked borders.

This corner plot was untended a few years ago and slightly letting the show down.  Now planted up with strawberries, potatoes and ornamental perennials (and disco rock balls!), it's a visual treat.

It was a wonderfully fun afternoon with a great community ethos - ideas that could be taken up by anyone wanting to get to know gardening neighbours better (we gardeners do love a good horticultural chat!).  As I cycled off back to reality (last minute supermarket shopping), some of the crowd had dispersed towards another Fringe event - a foraging walk at nearby Islington Ecology Centre - which Naomi had kindly reminded us about - another example of community spirit.

Traybake: Summer Soft-fruit Cake

Faced with a day off work in order to catch up with paperwork and gardening, what did I do? Make cake, of course. Procrastination is such fun.

A mug of tea and a slice of cake is one of the great rewards after a good potter round the plot and as the veg patch is at least offering up soft fruits at the moment, this recently discovered cake sprang to mind today. I haven't done a recipe on the blog for a long time but, I hope you'll agree, this one is worth sharing, especially as the summer may be on its way finally and tea in the garden can take its rightful place once more.

I found this cake via Pinterest; it's originally baked with just blueberries and called Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake. While my renaming of the adapted cake is not so alliterative, it tells it like it is. This is a cake that celebrates the soft fruit harvest of the summer kitchen garden. I used mostly blueberries, topped up with raspberries, strawberries (and, this time, sweet cherries); with lemon zest, vanilla and buttermilk, it's full of subtle flavours - I also used some of my lavender sugar* for the top crust.

Baked in a square tin, it looks like a traybake; the crisp sugar crusted top yields to a light, moist crumb with bursts of soft fruit.  Because I've now made it twice, I know that it's also heavenly warmed through and served with cream or custard as a pudding.

The original recipe came from this American blog; I've reworked it to grams rather than cups. Interestingly, I first made it to be shared with someone who is dairy intolerant so it was made with dairy free sunflower spread to replace the butter and soya milk instead of buttermilk. It worked perfectly.

Blueberry, etc, traybake cake:

100g sunflower spread or butter

200g caster sugar (keep a couple of spoonfuls back for the top)

Finely grated zest of a largish lemon

1 medium egg

1 teaspoon vanilla (extract not flavouring)

300g self raising flour

½ tsp baking powder

300g fresh soft fruit, eg. 200g blueberries plus 100g strawberries/raspberries, etc

140ml Buttermilk (about half a carton)

1. Preheat oven to 350F or 180C. Cream butter, lemon zest and sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add the egg and vanilla.  Beat well.

3. Take out a couple of spoonfuls of the flour and gently toss the soft fruit in this.

4. Mix the remaining flour, baking powder and salt together; Add to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk.

5. Fold in the blueberries/strawberries/other fruit.

6. Line an 8" square tin with baking parchment, spoon the cake mix in and sprinkle a good tablespoon of sugar over the top. Pop into the oven, middle shelf.  I check the cake with a skewer after 20 minutes and it always needs another 5 minutes. Adjust the time in 5 minute increments for your own oven. (The original recipe calls for a 9" pan and 35 minutes; in my oven this would be a disaster so I err on the side of caution.)

7. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before lifting the cake out onto a cooling rack.

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* Lavender sugar is a lovely thing to have for use in the kitchen, it gives a subtle flavour to cakes, biscuits, etc. Karen at Lavender and Lovage has a nice easy post on how to make your own.

Pumpkin Muffins

Yesterday I spoke of baking pumpkin muffins and promised the recipe.  Here it is, hopefully in time for some Hallowe'en partying this weekend.  I like to offer iced cupcakes or muffins or decorated biscuits to Trick or Treaters instead of sweets - does that make me odd?  It seems to go down well and I find it a more appealing alternative to the bags of tooth-rotting sweets that the kids come back with in their loot bags. (Most of which, in my home, don't get eaten - the thrill being in the hunter/gatherer phase.)

This recipe will make 12 good sized muffins (those are Lakeland muffin cases in the pic above, so probably about 2 inches deep - to give you an idea of size).

You will need:

7 oz (200g) peeled, deseeded and chunked pumpkin flesh
half Tablespoon oil (sunflower or other light oil)
10 oz (300g) plain flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg (I used large)
150 ml (5 fl oz) soured cream
50ml (1 3/4 fl oz) milk
5 oz (150g) soft brown sugar
2 oz (60g) butter, melted

:: This is the recipe I followed but, as an afterthought, felt the muffins would be extra nice with some fruit thrown in (raisins, sultanas, cranberries).  A friend who works at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant in Old Street also suggested the addition of ground cumin (which sounds delicious!).::

Assuming you already have your carved out pumpkin flesh, allow an hour for this recipe due to cooking time.  Important to know this if, like me, you are prone to whipping up a batch of cupcakes in less than half an hour for hungry mouths.

So, let's start:

Preheat your oven to 190C /375 F/Gas 5 ready to roast your pumpkin flesh.  Put in a baking dish, drizzle with oil and toss to coat.  (Or put oil and pumpkin in a plastic bag and give it a shake to coat.)  Roast for about 35 minutes (careful not to burn), remove, cool and mash with a fork.

Then turn your oven up to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Sift your flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl.  In another bowl lightly beat the egg, add the soured cream, milk, sugar, melted butter, mashed pumpkin and combine. (If adding raisins or sultanas and a half teaspoon of ground cumin, put those into this bowl with the other stuff.)  Pour this in with the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. 

Prepare your muffin pan:  either grease the wells or line with muffin cases.  Spoon large dollops of the mixture into the cases or pan wells. (See below for tip.) Bake for 20 minutes until risen and golden.  Leave to cool for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack.

I then carried on and iced mine as my tasters were mostly female and under 10 years old but I thought they were nice eaten plain from the oven (I don't have a sweet tooth) and of course if you've added raisins, they'll also add sweetness.

For Hallowe'en, think about icing with orange glacé icing (icing sugar and water) and chocolate stars or with white chocolate and then pipe spider webs over the top.

~Not my best photo - the lighting was poor and the cakes wouldn't last until morning! ~

This recipe is adapted from Susannah Blake's in the book Baking Magic - 280 pages of incredibly tempting muffins, cupcakes, biscuits - both sweet and savoury - with irresistable photos.

Helpful tip - filling cake cases:  When making cupcakes or muffins, I can't be bothered with the faff of spooning the mix into the cases (waaaay too messy and time consuming) - I use my ice cream scoop (like this one: Ice Cream Scoop) i.e. a squeezy one that delivers just the right amount of mix over to the cases without mess.  I didn't realise they came in different sizes, mines about 5 cm diameter. 

Best for carving pumpkins…

Well, we're nearly at the end of October; I had the best intentions of thrilling you all with a daily dose of cooking inspiration with pumpkin as the main ingredient which - load me up with guilt - has not happened. Those particular seeds of inspiration have fallen on stony ground thanks to a several factors: a few autumnal tummy bugs sweeping through the home, extra large doses of domesticity being required from me as I have my twent-ager niece staying with me (I begrudge housework when I could be gardening) and getting my son off to a school trip to Spain (sooo envious) … not to mention Work.

The draw for my giveaway book took place (drawn by my son) and the winner is:  Pandora!  The book is now winging its way to Cornwall in time for some spooky and creative carving.  Thank you to everyone that entered, it was such fun checking out where y'all hail from.

And I found time to start my pumpkin carving experiments. Tomorrow I'm off to Fortnum's to see how the professionals do it (and will try and take loads of photos for a blog show-and-tell at the weekend).
In the meantime, for anyone about to start hollowing out a pumpkin, this is the tool that works best - for me at least:

Yep - a melon baller.  I spooned the orange globe into submission. My pumpkin was fairly small - about 8 inches diameter - and this really did the biz for final smoothing when getting the right thickness.  You can see the array of "tools" which I worked through:  Sharp knife, small sharp knife , spoon, grapefruit knife.  All useful but, seriously, with the melon baller we're talking icing on cake for speed and tired hands.  (Plus, I imagine that small, child-sized, hands could manage this easily.)  I've read elsewhere that ice-cream scoops can help; I haven't tried - yet - but I'd recommend one that has a clean edge for digging in to the pumpkin flesh.

 Did I mention cake?  By the end, I felt that I'd earned a treat and I baked all that lovely golden flesh into Spiced Pumpkin Muffins.  Yum, yum. Recipe will be posted later today - they're delicious eaten warm from the oven!

It's a piece of cake, really …

After quite a storm last night, the day has dawned clear and bright in London.  The Gods have been kind to us as today is earmarked for more Ivy Clearing - this time, hopefully, with a small team working together.  So before I go outside to get on with the hacking and chopping, here's phase two of Getting to Know Beetroot.

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Next up in my bid to like beetroot:  Chocolate and Beetroot Cake.

Your tea, Milady, is served. 

I'm told that this is what is described in Australia as "bonzer".   So I scoured the web and found several versions and chose this one by Simon Rimmer.  Verdict: Actually, not bad.  Moist, chocolatey and not too sweet but with beetroot undertones (unsurprisingly) and incredibly easy to make. (I think I must have quite a sweet tooth, though, because somehow the chocolate hit wasn't as intense as the look of the cake promised.  Does that make sense?  Next time I'd add more chocolate.)

Edited!  Have just taken a piece round to L for a taste test.  Verdict:  "Mmm.  Mmm.  That's really nice.  No, I like that.  I think that's just right.  Is the recipe on the blog?  I'm going to make that.  What size tin did you use?"  And, actually, I enjoyed my taster piece as well.  As did my teenage son (who had two pieces yesterday.)  Because it's moist with good 'keeping' qualities, L thought it nicer than straightforward Chocolate Sponge Cake.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could all come round for a tasting! Caro @ YRG x

The original recipe came from the Good Food Channel and made an enormous cake (23cm tin) so I made a two-thirds mix (17cm tin), using 2 eggs rather than 3.  My quantities below, or go here for the original recipe.

(1)  Heat oven to 190C.

(2)  Cook and peel the beetroot. (You can have fun with this part: it can look as though you're the victim of a nasty Kitchen Accident as the juice drips!)

(3) 116g plain flour; 50g cocoa; 6g baking powder; 150g caster sugar.
      Sift all these ingredients together into a bowl.

(4)  2 large eggs; 133ml corn oil; 150g cooked beetroot 
      Place all the above in blender and whizz up together.

Woohoo!  Now that's what I call pink!

Fold (4) above into (3) above.

This looks disgusting, but don't be put off.

Put into a lined 17 or 18 cm cake tin.  (I like to keep it simple by using these from Lakeland in UK.)

Bake 30 minutes but be prepared to give it an extra 5 if the skewer doesn't come out clean.

See how I cut the liner to fit the tin better?

Notebook:

1. I couldn't get Corn Oil so used Grapeseed.  Seemed to work okay.  
2. Recipe asked for raw beetroot which I thought would be a bit crunchy in the cake so I pre-cooked by boiling, then cooled and chucked in the blender.  My logic was that the recipe wanted un-dressed beetroot rather than salad beetroot soaked with vinegar.
3. The cake was nicest with a blob of squirty cream, which was the genius idea of my son.  (It's also nice with homemade chocolate custard but if I gave you the recipe for that, I'd be getting right off the subject of gardening, garden produce and your 5-A-Day veg!) 
   

See, it's quite nice in close up too!

Yesterday was a very good day …

It's a strange old thing, this blogging lark, isn't it?  One minute I'm feeling that there's nothing to tell, then suddenly I find there's almost too much to fit into one post.  So here are three lovely things that happened yesterday:

1.  I (think I might just have) saved a bumblebee.  As I left home,  I noticed a large, very still, bumble bee on an expanse of cold concrete path outside the door.  It's not often you get to see one of these beauties close up and, as I bent down for a closer look, one of it's legs stretched. So, not dead but probably too tired and cold to move to safety.  Having recently been prompted to read up about bee hotels, I scooped it up (on my shopping list as it was probably not too tired to sting me!) and took it to some sheltered ground level Knotweed stems, where it perked up a bit, and I left some freshly picked flowers within easy reach so it could get to the nectar.  (That may have been calling to my inner Girl Guide a bit, but it satisfied my need to nurture.)  Any hoo, the bee was not to be seen when I returned, so I like to think it made it to underground Bee Safety.

2.  Passing through a local Garden Centre (oh, alright then… Homebase), among all the almost empty gardening shelves was a box containing winter hardy Onion Sets…  (slaps forehead) a veg which I'd completely forgotten about!  (And they're a staple of my shopping list.)   One purchase later, I consider this a very serendipitous encounter indeed.

3.  Returning home to post my October photo collage, I notice a comment from a lovely fellow gardener, Jo at The Good Life, who has nominated my little bloggy-woggy for an award.  Gosh.  I'm totally awed and honoured.  So, thank you - and yes, I'm very, very pleased to accept.  (It may take me a while to pass the award on, in the time honoured tradition, as I first have to check out my fellow nominees, but I'll do my best.)

So, now that I have proof that people out there are reading my scribblings,  to celebrate, I think it's time for a piece of this…

A nice cup of Tea with Cake …

Sundays, weather permitting, seems to be the day when we go out to the Veg Patch and dig, sow, harvest, chat or loaf around discussing next year's planting plan whilst (if you're me) gazing encouragingly at this year's plants.  And at the end of all this hard work, in the time honoured tradition, a nice mug of tea and a slice of cake has been earned. 

I like a bit of cake at teatime, it's the way I was brought  up.  My mother ran a tight ship where meals were concerned and you could set your watch by her schedule for afternoon tea.  When my siblings and I were very young, we had proper tea: sandwiches first - or perhaps boiled egg and soldiers (fingers of bread and butter) - then fruit or jelly (if we were lucky) and, finally, cake. Always, always, homemade.  My maternal grandfather was a baker by trade and, when we went to visit, he would make the most beautiful fairy cakes for us; I particularly remember a plate of cupcakes iced with tiny swans - and I don't mean drawn on; they swam in 3D formation across the tops of the little cakes. How totally cool is that?   

My cupcakes are nowhere near so spectacular but I still believe they should look tempting.  With lingering thoughts of the cupcake mountain from the Regent Street Festival, I decided to make cupcakes rather than a whole cake.  Half these cupcakes were swirled with coffee buttercream and sprinkled with chocolate strands (above) and the other half were reserved for my Secret Surprise.

The recipe is what is known as a basic 4, 4, 4 and 2.  (Experienced bakers will immediately recognise this as a classic Victoria sponge cake mixture).

Secret Surprise Cupcakes
(makes 12 in a Muffin tin.  Use Muffin sized cases.)

4 ounces butter; 4 ounces caster (fine) sugar; 2 eggs at room temperature (UK medium size); 4 ounces flour (Self Raising, sieved).
Also 1 teaspoon Baking Powder and 1 teaspoon good quality Vanilla Extract.
Milk to loosen if mixture is not 'dropping' consistency at the end - add as needed but go easy and start with 1 Tablespoon.

Preheat oven to 180C.  Mix softened butter and sugar together until very pale and creamy.  Add eggs plus a couple of tablespoons of flour to stop any tendency for the eggs to curdle.  Mix.  Use a metal spoon to fold in the rest of the flour (with baking powder added). This keeps the air in the mixture.  Add the vanilla extract.  Test consistency of mixture.  If it feels thick, add a little milk.

Two-thirds fill each muffin case.  (Any leftover can be shared between the cases.)  Bake for 15 minutes.  Then test by patting the top with your finger.  If the cake resists, they're done.  If not, give them another 3 or 4 minutes.  Remove to a cooling rack.

Here's the surprise:

When cool, slice out a cone shape from the top.   Add a dollop of strawberry jam in the hole (preferably homemade) and a spoon of whipped or thickened cream.  Replace the cone of cake, push down slightly and dust with icing sugar.  Secret Victoria Sponge (cup)Cake!  And, to my  mind, utterly delish - and a fair reward after a day's gardening.

Cupcake revealed …